FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT PHILADELPHIA - PAGE 3

Philadelphia. -- Louis J. Gambaccini has learned to preach strong but vividly contrasting sermons in his effort to save, for the public and the future, America's fourth-largest mass-transit system.On the one hand Gambaccini plays Mr. Gloom, Doom and Warning. During the budget battles of spring '91 he pointedly raised the specter of halting, for lack of money, the entire Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority he heads -- a subway-rail-trolley-bus system that covers a five-county area the size of Delaware and carries 1.2 million riders a day.Even with the nation's highest base transit fare ($1.50)

PHILADELPHIA -- The City of Brotherly Love set a new record for homicides yesterday with the killing of a woman in a neighborhood bar in South Philadelphia followed by a triple homicide in a suspected crack house on the West Side.The deaths brought to 505 the number of homicides in Philadelphia this year, eclipsing the record of 501 set last year.Philadelphia became the fifth major city this year to set a homicide record, joining New York, Dallas, San Antonio and Phoenix."We're still seeing the national trend," said Police Commissioner Willie L. Williams.

PHILADELPHIA -- When the city of Philadelphia announced two months ago that it was levying a city wage tax on visiting professional athletes, a lot of people, including a number of visiting professional athletes, laughed.But the city is having the last laugh.The Philadelphia Daily News has learned that the city is close to striking deals with the four major professional sports leagues and their unions that would clear the way for the city to start collecting back taxes from out-of-town athletes.

PHILADELPHIA - A comeback city, says Mayor John Street, may purge its streets of abandoned cars. It can repossess tens of thousands of abandoned houses. It can clean up derelict lots, neighborhood after neighborhood. It may aspire, as Mr. Street is now trying, to green the empty fields and induce a historic wave of private reinvestment. "But it's naive," says Mr. Street, "to believe that doing those physical steps will have a transforming impact on lives" of people in troubled neighborhoods.

A card table made for Thomas Willing, Colonial Philadelphia merchant, mayor and "reluctant rebel," is expected to bring between $1 million and $1.5 million when it is auctioned at Sotheby's on Feb. 1.Found in 1964 in a packing crate in the basement of a former bank at 305 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia, where it had been stored since 1898, it has been used for the last quarter century by a Pennsylvania family who are descendants of the original owners.Neither...

Their hometown has just come through the worst recession in 50 years.Its unemployment and office vacancy rates are alarmingly high.Its municipal government has teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, and cut services drastically.Yet instead of wallowing in their immediate problems, the civic leaders of Philadelphia gathered recently to ponder possible locations for a new wave of high-rise development in the 21st century.Instead of bemoaning the scarcity of office tenants, they're exploring ways to take advantage of the new high speed trains planned for the northeast corridor and to lure national and international headquarters.

PHILADELPHIA -- Former Mayor W. Wilson Goode, the city' first black mayor, has written a political memoir containing the revelation that he feared that racist Philadelphia police officers were planning to kill him during the fiery confrontation between police and the radical group Move in 1985.Mr. Goode says he never alerted his security guards or any other law-enforcement officials, but simply stayed home, out of harm's way.Mr. Goode was criticized by the commission that investigated the incident for not being on the scene and for allowing officials he said he did not trust to run the operation.

PHILADELPHIA -- As 1999 dawned, there was deep concern among civic leaders of this economically battered city.They feared the campaign to succeed Mayor Ed Rendell, forced to step down by term limits, would turn into a divisive, nasty TV-ad driven season, drenched in racial overtones.It didn't happen. Even though the winner, City Council President John Street is an African American, and the Republican businessman he barely defeated, Sam Katz, is white, the contest was remarkably free of negative attacks and tactics.

PHILADELPHIA -- He looks like everything you want in a savior.Six ax handles across at the shoulders.Clear-eyed. Firm chin. Square jaw. Bull neck. Cleft in the chin.Dimples when he smiles, which will make the little girls squeal.And a sinister, half-moon scar under the left eye, high up on the cheekbone, which suggests unspoken menace and which, his employers fervently hope, will make opponents turn tail and busily skate the other way.Eric Lindros played Philadelphia for the first time yesterday.

PHILADELPHIA -- The vice president approached his task with the precision of a surgeon, slowly extracting tales from elderly Philadelphians impoverished by their reliance on prescription drugs.Al Gore was on a mission here yesterday to build enthusiasm among the nation's 35 million senior citizens for President Clinton's health care reform proposal. And he wanted to make sure no detail was lost on the attending gaggle of news media people.One couple he interviewed, Al and Angelina Nicotra, were struggling with bills totaling $500 a month for drugs.